


pardon my french

by graceunderpressure



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, arguably violent sex, light violence in fighting, murder mentioned, one semi-breathplay scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-12
Updated: 2013-10-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:04:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graceunderpressure/pseuds/graceunderpressure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was supposed to be a one-time thing, just to get the advantage. She's not exactly sure where it got out of hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pardon my french

**Author's Note:**

> Fandom, I blame you. No mirrorverse Carol Marcus/Nyota Uhura? Fine, I'll write it myself.
> 
> It's just some mirrorverse girls in love. Smut involved for sure, but not really the main objective. Oh, I suck. Just read the thing (please). Jim/Bones implied, but very lightly. You can pretty much imagine Bones being in love with any man on the Enterprise.
> 
> EDITED AS OF: 1/28/15

The first time it happens it’s just convenience.  

There’s a landing party down to the surface, and it had been too long since she had last gotten to hear someone plead for their life in Andorian. She’s not scheduled to be on the away team, but the roster includes Doctor Carol Marcus, and her brief internal debate is settled almost immediately. It’s much easier to fuck her than kill her. Nyota learned long ago that sex is a great weapon, almost as useful as her unparalleled skill in languages and sometimes more so than a blade. Murder can sometimes get you a reprimand, particularly if the victim is as useful as Marcus has proven to be, and sex is practically encouraged as a way to establish power levels among similarly ranked officers.

Carol’s security system is surprisingly easy to hack into for belonging to a technological genius, suggesting a level of confidence that Nyota admires even as she eagerly takes advantage of it. Her fingers buzz with anticipation as the door slides open.

Carol is barely dressed yet, hands occupied with strapping a small agonizer into her thigh holster, and when she looks up at the intruder, her face reveals nothing. Nyota’s eyes follow the sharp angles and curves of the woman in front of her and slide to the left where another weapon, a large phaser gun sits. She licks her lips.

Nyota blinks twice and the phaser fills her vision, aimed directly and giving her just enough time to duck under its line of fire. When she swipes Carol’s arm, it skids across the floor, shooting a green beam of light into a large painting of the dunes of Kardai. Her hand closes on Carol’s arm as the painting falls loudly and she uses the grip to shove her opponent against the far wall.

Their bodies are pressed so closely together that she can feel Carol’s controlled breathing. There’s no hitch or hesitation as she pushes back against Nyota, still convinced that she’s in control of the situation, reaching strategically for the agonizer strapped to her thigh. Instead of fighting for control of the weapon, Nyota launches forward and knocks their mouths together. At the press of lips, Carol freezes, surprised for the first time. Her hand hesitates on the handle of the weapon, and Nyota leans further into her, hipbones sharp against bare stomach. She slides her tongue along Carol’s bottom lip and tastes something sweet.

Carol lets out a breathy sigh against her lips and brings her hand to the back of Nyota’s head. The kiss is powerful and angry; Carol opens her mouth and the taste is amplified. It’s flowery—like honey or maybe arsenic—and when Carol bites down viciously, the flavor is flooded with the bitter iron of blood. The combination is intoxicating. She reaches for the agonizer and throws it out of reach, and Carol lets her.

Warmth is already pooling in her stomach, and her hips twitch minutely against the body pressed against her. Carol’s legs open instinctually in response, and Nyota takes advantage of it, fitting her thigh in between them. An obscene moan is muffled into her mouth as Carol rocks slowly against her. The heat in her stomach drops even lower and suddenly the pace she’s set feels excruciatingly slow. Her fingers are practically numb with anticipation, nails scraping along the small pink scars that cover Carol’s stomach and traveling down to play at the edge of her standard issue underwear.

When the fabric tears, she can feel Carol’s silent laughter against her whole body, rumbling quietly at every point they’re touching. She pushes her fingertips deeply into Carol’s thigh in retaliation dragging her nails upward. Carol’s stomach tightens in anticipation against her, and she dips her fingers shallowly, gathering wetness to sliding it down to circle around the clit. Carol’s hips twitch.

She swipes her mouth along Carol’s cheek and down further to smile into her neck. The friction builds up and she rewets her fingers as she sucks and nips sharply at the place when neck and shoulder join. Nyota relishes each hitch she extracts when she presses harder and then lightens her touch again. The tension in Carol’s body is tightening, her growing impatience filling the room. This time Nyota enters her fully with two fingers, twisting her thumb to maintain contact with the clit. Carol’s groan of gratitude is short-lived as Nyota begins to trace patterns on the inside of her walls.

She’s tight and warm and arches desperately under each touch, eventually grabbing Nyota by her wrist and forcing her to increase her speed. The room echoes with the sound of her head banging lightly against the metal of the ship as she furiously grips at Nyota’s back; her fingernails are buried so deeply in dark skin that blood is beading up into them.

There’s so little space between them that she can feel Carol’s every muscle tense and shift against her, feel her hipbones pierce her side as her movements become less and less controlled. The anticipation grows in both of them, and Nyota feels like her whole body is on fire with the high of knowing what she’s making the woman underneath her feel. Nyota grabs a fistful of blonde hair and tugs, the pain exactly what Carol needs to send her over the edge. Her leg wraps around Nyota’s waist as she comes, tightening as her hips snap wildly and all the air flees her body in a strangled groan.

Their racing pulses echo in the silence between them—Carol’s breath hot and heavy as it pools in the curve of her neck. Her eyes are still slightly out of focus, and Nyota uses the moment to slide her own phaser against Carol’s stomach, stunning her quickly before she recovers. The woman in her arms flinches violently and passes out, sliding unceremoniously into a heap on the floor.

Nyota makes no move to arrange her more comfortably and sucks her fingers thoughtfully instead. She savors the taste and the power trip more than she would have an orgasm of her own, and she’s careful to make sure her boot heels tread directly over Carol’s long fingers on her way out the door. The soft snaps they make as they break ring in her head.

***

 She had taken longer than she should have, Carol more fun that she might have anticipated, and she finds herself having to run to the transporter pad. Nyota’s met with an impatient Captain and three bored looking officers.

“Doctor Marcus finds herself indisposed. She sent me in her place.”

Kirk pulls out his famous smirk as she explains, but she’s already climbing onto the transporter pad, not waiting to listen to any objections or affirmations. He’s not fooled but also not particularly inclined to care, so long as Marcus proves to still be alive when they return. There are two other science officers still in the party, and he’s proven to be more tickled by her insolence in the past rather than threatened. Her assumptions are correct, and he turns to give Scotty the orders to beam down without questioning her.

As the gold light surrounds her, displacing her atoms, Nyota can’t help but allow herself a small, satisfied smile—the weight of a leg still lingering like a ghost upon her hip and half-moon scratches stinging painfully on her back.

The trip proves to be at least as invigorating as what she did to obtain it. Kirk doesn’t even say anything when she slips away to go find a victim or two instead of waiting for instruction. They were in the same year at the Empire Academy, and she suspects that he holds some fondness for her, though he would never voice it. For her part, she rarely considers killing him for his position.

When she returns from the surface—dark blue blood wet on her face, hands, and uniform—she finds the no longer indisposed Doctor Marcus waiting for her in the quarters. Four fingers on her right hand are still wrapped in small bone regenerators. Carol follows her gaze, and the two of them study their faint blue glow coming from her hand. The soft hum the regenerators emit echoes in the room.

“You’re lucky that I’m ambidextrous,” Carol drawls, and Nyota could have sworn she didn’t find English accents inherently seductive a moment ago.

The anger is etched all over Carol’s face, though the lust is just as obviously flaring in her eyes, and Nyota thinks she catches a flicker of amusement there, too. As it is, she’s mad enough at the earlier stunt that she breaks Nyota’s arm in three separate places—which is, coincidentally, also the number of times she makes her come that night.

***

After that, they start fucking regularly—often and everywhere. Carol is without a doubt the best she’s ever had. The first few times there are missteps, but they’re both diligent studiers and quick learners. Within weeks, Carol knows her body better than she does herself, and Nyota’s never been so willing to allow someone to know things that will give them power over her. She lets Carol find which spot to kiss behind her right ear, tells her to suck but never bite her neck,  shows her how she comes hardest when her hips are held down so hard that they’re painted purples and greens in the morning, never able to heal completely. Her body is littered with layer upon layer of bruising and scars, stark against her dark complexion.

There’s no way to hide the marks in the small uniforms Starfleet issues. Doctor Mccoy had never been known for her patience and within a week, he had loudly announced that his refusal to heal the two of them for anything that wouldn’t affect job performance, so she stands up straight in the corridors and wears them with pride.

Carol’s scars look even worse against her pale, white skin. Nyota’s bite marks try valiantly to heal, failing as her teeth rip them open over and over again to Carol’s increasing pleasure. Her neck looks like a war zone. Just looking at the impressionist artwork staining their bodies has Nyota’s mouth drying up and her fingers twitching.

People notice—of course they do—but no one thinks anything of it. It’s not abnormal to choose a partner more frequently than others, and it doesn’t have to mean an attachment. Most people just assume they’re too evenly matched to have picked a winner in Marcus v Uhura.

Two months go by, and if she sleeps around less and less, it’s just because the quality of sex with Carol hasn’t tapered off yet. It drives her crazier than anything with Spock or Gaila ever had, and they were the closest she’d had to regular fucks before. She just doesn’t have the time to waste with anyone else, not with the way Carol looks eyeing the bruises spiraling from Nyota’s hips and up along the sides of her stomach.

***

Nyota is aware that Carol Marcus is brilliant. Everyone is aware that Carol Marcus is brilliant. Her father’s an Admiral, but when you hear the name Marcus in the Empire, you think “Carol” and you think “torpedo” and you think “death if I piss her off.”

She’d headed the design and production of all major weaponry in the Empire for the past five years and shocked everyone when she left to accept Kirk’s offer of a place on the ISS Enterprise. Part of the deal was a private lab room with nearly bottomless funds to work on her own projects. If Carol’s not serving as science officer on the bridge or making Nyota scream in a dark corner, she’ll be there.

Brilliance has never intimidated Nyota, especially in a field so different from her own, and she gives little thought to trying to scope out the lab. It adjoins to Carol’s quarters, with a much more impressive security system protecting it. Once or twice, catching her breath on the mattress, her eyes had settled on the silver doors, but she had never pressed. It hadn’t seemed important.

Instead, she silently respected the boundaries that seemed to be in place from the beginning. They barely spoke outside of sex and never lingered afterward. Carol didn’t ask Nyota for details on cracking another written alien language, and Nyota didn’t visit Carol’s lab to browse her schematics.

One day, she’s sitting on Carol’s bed, admiring the movement of her back muscles as the blonde slides a dark blue shift over her head. Nyota starts to reach for her boots when she’s stopped.

 “You don’t have to put your shoes on.”

Carol’s voice is carefully even, as it always is when they’re not fucking, and she proceeds to enter a complicated series of codes to unlock her lab door. When she slips into the other room, leaving all her security very clearly off, she doesn’t look back to gauge Nyota’s reaction. Which is probably a blessing, because Nyota’s not really sure what reaction she’s having.

Her first instinct is that it’s a mistake, but Carol doesn’t make mistakes. They’ve been fucking for two months, and Carol had never implied she should stay, never used her codes where Nyota might be able to see what they were, certainly never left her lab unlocked as an invitation. Her heart is racing while she calculates all the different ways this could be a trap. Curiosity skates up and down her spine.

She could never resist a dare.

The lab is surprisingly overcrowded and disorderly. Her living quarters are Spartan and kept meticulously clean, and if Nyota had given the matter much thought, she probably would have assumed the workspace would be as neat and organized as the bunk or as Carol is in person, never a hair out of place.

The reality is starkly different—there are pieces of sheet metal in haphazard piles around the room, a web of colored wires taking up the greater part of a workbench, design PADDs strewn everywhere, and various tools hanging from the ceiling. It looks like one of her bombs blew the whole place up. Actually, there are scorch marks in more than one surface of the room, so it’s not an implausible theory.

Carol simply gestures towards the singular stool in the room and proceeds to ignore her guest. She stands herself; she’s grabbed the nearest PADD and begun sketching over a previously drawn weapon design. At a glance, it looks like it might be the beginnings of a handheld rocket launcher.

Unsettled but loath to show it, Nyota tries not to fidget until she realizes the area where she’s sitting looks suspiciously like it’s been hastily cleared. There is a small empty area of table, with nothing in it except for a PADD already cued up to a login screen. Nyota uses her authentication to pull up her own work.

She’s as interested in her own profession as Carol is in hers, and it’s easy to get lost in the translations, forgetting to be wary of motives and the complicated gameplay of this relationship. When she finally looks up, Carol is projecting a 3D image of the design she’d started earlier. She’s weaving holographic wires into an intricate web, her eyes focused and bright. She looks less reserved than Nyota’s ever gotten to see outside of sex, biting gently at her bottom lip in concentration.

Her stomach flutters uncomfortably at the sight. She forces her eyes back down to the language of Deneb II, but she can’t stop herself from stealing glances of the woman working so diligently in front of her. Carol seems so at home here, fulfilled and totally in her element. The fluttering tightens maddeningly and grows greedy. She was never good at suppressing her more powerful urges.

It’s with no more than a moment’s hesitation that she approaches Carol and kicks out at her legs, knocking the science officer to the floor. Carol braces her fall adeptly and grabs Nyota’s ankle, bringing her painfully to her knees and starting a small tussle between them. Nyota ends up on top, her breath heavy as she stares into the bright blue of Carol’s eyes. She strongly suspects that Carol let her win and kisses her twice as hard because of it.

Carol starts leaving the lab unlocked more often.

Nyota always follows when she does.

There’s something about watching Carol work that she can’t resist. As it turns out, the chaos of materials in the lab actually _is_ organized, even if it’s an unorthodox manner. Never once does she see Carol have to shuffle items around in frustration. She’s not sure if the mess is a diversion tactic to confuse any onlookers or if it’s just the way the scientist’s mind works. She’s not sure anyone else has even seen the room, but it wouldn’t be unlike Carol to build another level of security into her unfinished projects.

Carol rarely goes through anything in a linear fashion, hopping from one design to the other before completing any of them. In the time that Nyota’s been visiting, she finished a physical prototype for a new full-sized trilithium torpedo and started and trashed three new designs before coming back to the handheld Nyota had first seen her working on.

Carol works with singular purpose, but never appears surprised or reluctant when Nyota interrupts for an impromptu fuck, as long as her materials aren’t disturbed. Once Nyota had tried to clear a spot on one of the workbenches, but no sooner did her fingers brush the first welder than they were broken.

It seemed like a fair enough rule, so she kept it, although she bit Carol’s tongue a little harder than usual that day.

Despite all the unspoken boundaries being crossed by Nyota’s presence, they still don’t speak outside of sex until after the handheld launcher prototype is finished. Carol lasered the last bit closed, loaded the compact rockets, and looked up at Nyota.

“Want to help test it out?”

They do so when they land on Rikus IV the next day, Carol hacking into the system to get them added to the away team (“And we didn’t even have to fuck anyone to get on the list, Lieutenant Uhura. Imagine.”).

They settle on a wide plateau with two mountains on either end. Carol pulls the handheld out of her bag and demonstrates how to hold it, placing it in Nyota’s hands and situating her appropriately. Nyota’s lower back is warm where Carol’s hand sits.

“Just like an Empire phaser, but it’s a little heavier so you’re going to want to bend your arm a little, like so. If you flick this switch here, it’ll go to semi-automatic but start off with just the one for the test…and the trigger’s right here.”

When she steps back, Nyota feels the loss of her touch acutely.

It takes exactly one minute and forty-eight seconds for the bullet rocket to reach the mountain on the right, but the explosion is immediate upon impact. The rock shatters loudly and rolls down, piling up on the plateau, and smoke and dust drift up artfully into the purple sky.

She switches the gun to semi-automatic and empties the launcher in three spurts, failing to suppress a grin. The entire mountain is reduced to a pile of fine powder, and she’s officially smitten with the instrument. She itches to try it out on a village, internally cursing Rikus IV for being uninhabited.

She says as much and hears Carol laugh openly for the first time. It’s not the breathy chuckle she’s gotten to hear before, during sex. It’s louder and the hint of warmth that she’d always thought she imagined is amplified. Her stomach flips uncomfortably. They’re standing there, smiling at each other, something crumbling inside her. She suddenly empathizes deeply with the mountain.

Carol says, “Next planet,” and it’s a promise.

It changes things. It’s unspoken but there nonetheless. They don’t just share the lab space anymore, but interact in it as well. Nyota asks questions about what project Carol’s working on, actually gets answers and sometimes even explanations about how the mechanisms work. Nyota starts leaving her own PADDs in the room, and there’s a space silently cleared for her things.

One day she looks up to see Carol staring at her thoughtfully.

She swipes nervously at her face, trying to keep her expression neutral. “I still have Riley’s blood on my cheek?” she asks.

“Swahili, right?” the blonde says instead of answering her question.

“What?”

“Your native language? I realize you know, like, 50 of them, but Swahili was your first, correct?”

Nyota agrees warily.

“Teach me then,” Carol demands, moving across the room until she’s standing in front of her.

Nyota squints at her suspiciously for a full minute before responding. “Quick lesson? The name Uhura comes from the word ‘uhuru,’ meaning freedom. ‘Nyota’ means ‘star.’”

“Which is why you have these,” Carol states, fingering the tattoos that start at the inside of Nyota’s right wrist and spiral up to her elbow. It’s a smattering of black stars, beginning small and growing in size as they swing around her arm and the space between them decreases.

“Which is why I have these,” Nyota agrees. She arches an eyebrow. “Is that enough, or would you like to know more? I’m going to need payment.”

Carol’s teeth flash predatorily at her.

***

“I’ve always wanted to do this to someone willing,” she says later, sliding an old fashioned needle underneath Nyota’s right eyebrow.

“This seems like it’s more fun for you than me. I don’t see how this is a fairly balanced trade.”

“You shouldn’t have agreed, I guess.” Carol shrugs, and the needle stings as it pushes through the tissue. After the barbell is secured, Carol laughs and flicks away a spot of blood with her tongue. Nyota very resolutely stamps down the warmth in her chest.

Secretly, she believes that she got the better end of the bargain after all. Carol is incredibly bright, picking up on the nuances of Swahili quickly, and Nyota enjoys teaching her. Her English accent is a trial at first, but within a week or two, she’s pronouncing the words correctly.

They start to have lunch together in the officers’ hall, but after letting her guard down and responding too earnestly to one of Carol’s jokes, she insists their meals move to the lab as well. She fiddles with the replicators for days to make food that resembles that of her home country, and they eat it in what has become Nyota’s corner while conjugating verbs.

She finds that she likes spending time with Carol as much as she likes fucking her, which is, quite frankly, _terrifying_. She begins to notice all sorts of little things about the other woman, like the way she scrunches her nose when she’s frustrated, or the wrinkle at the corner of her mouth that twitches when she finds something funny, or the lines permanently etched onto her forehead from squinting at her blueprints for too long. The more time Nyota spends around her the more she can pick up the subtlest clues in the other woman’s expression, learning the language of Carol as Carol learns the language of her people.

Sometimes if Nyota’s initiated sex in the middle of a project, Carol will mutter torpedo jargon under her breath, continuing the structure in her head while the woman between her thighs tries to make her lose her train of thought. Nyota works to convinces herself it’s not adorable but fails abysmally.

They linger longer and longer after sex as time passes by. Nyota is still careful never to spend the night, but it grows increasingly difficult to extract herself from Carol’s tangled limbs. Once she catches herself lying dazedly in bed, drawing intricate circles on Carol’s spine, _happy_. She didn’t think it was possible to leave a room that fast.

 In her dreams, she’s gentler with Carol then she can be during the day. She nuzzles and kisses every bite and bruise she leaves, and after they’ve both come, she falls asleep with her head tucked into Carol’s shoulder.

Often, she wakes with a name she wished she’d never heard still on her lips. Carol Marcus. A name that haunts her, awake and asleep. “Carol” in Standard refers to a song of joy, but it has French and German origins tracing it to the meaning “freeman,” similar to the meaning of her own last name. Nyota thinks bitterly that she’s never felt less free in her life.

Marcus has its origins in the name Mars, the Roman god of war, but that too seems wrong. Mars was occupied with casual destruction; Carol is more like his sister—Minerva, Athena, fellow god of the battlefield—her every move disciplined and strategic, but twice as deadly. She saunters through Nyota’s head and corners her with her own thoughts.

Now that she knows she tries harder to fight it—comes to the lab less, spends more time focused on her own work, tries to limit the sex to outside of their respected quarters.

It only serves to make her more desperate when they _are_ together. Her kisses are frantic and fleeting, her hands fluttering against the body underneath her; she’s terrified of the secrets she’s giving away. Words fight against her throat, bubbling over her lips before she can stop them. Nyota disguises them, equips herself with the weapons left to her—her languages.

 _I want you_ , she whispers in Latin against Carol’s neck.

 _Want to keep you mine; keep you safe_ , she kisses into Carol’s spine in Italian.

She writes sonnets in Romulan into the purple bruises she sucks into Carol’s thighs and threatens her hipbones in Klingon.

 _You’re a song that’s stuck to my skin_ , she sings in French. _A song that plays again and again, and I can’t scrub it off._

In Andorian: _I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. I wish I still didn’t._

Carol sighs and moans and screams at each word, oblivious to all but the gentle caress of long fingers and the angry edge of teeth.

Nyota decides she’s going to have to kill her.

***

She thinks obsessively about the ways she could do it: cold and impersonal with a phaser, ironically with one of Carol’s own designs, painstakingly with her favorite dagger. She starts to fantasize about it whenever she begins to feel powerless, struggling against the invisible bonds that tie her to Carol. She wants so badly to be free of them, to be what she was before; she can taste the oncoming death and her release.

In the end, the weapons she chooses don’t matter—Carol kicks them all aside in turn.

Their struggle is doubly desperate than usual. They fight roughly, slamming into the walls of Carol’s bedroom. Carol breaks a chair when she’s flung across the room and a vase when she shatters it against Nyota’s skull. The upper hand passes between the two of them until Nyota gets her fingers tight around Carol’s throat.

They twist until the skin turns from white to pink underneath them. Carol makes shallow gasps and struggles futilely before her hands reach up to tangle with Nyota’s. Instead of trying to claw them off, she pushes down and forces Nyota to clench tighter around Carol’s neck.

In shock, Nyota’s eyes flick upwards. Carol’s pupils are blown—large and black—and her stare is deadly.

 _I dare you_ , it shouts.

The color is draining from her already pale face when she begins to rut against Nyota’s leg. Her gasping is choked off into a soft gagging noise, and she never breaks their eye contact as her hips undulate more and more frantically.

Nyota’s so turned on she can’t breathe; it feels like their hands are around her neck instead. She rocks back into the body underneath her, grip tightening. Their movements are frenzied and needy, the air between them fraught with arousal and something deeper.

Nyota can feel the girl dying in her arms, at her hands, can feel herself finally being free of her. Her heart soars before plummeting sharply. Suddenly faced with the reality, the idea of being without Carol is terrifying. Ice travels down her spine, warring with the heat running rampant throughout her body.

In a moment of sick realization, she accepts that she can’t finish it. Carol’s made her broken and weak, and for the first time, she can’t end a life. Her hold loosens. Carol comes as her face fades into purple and her eyes flutter shut, and her hands squeeze and then fall limp against Nyota’s.

Nyota’s fingers leave Carol’s neck and fumble instead for the back of her head, smashing into her for a rough kiss. It’s one-sided; Carol gasping desperately against her lips as Nyota finally reaches her own orgasm against a sharp hip.

 _I hate you_ , she bites into Carol’s open mouth in Russian. _I hate you; I hate you; I love you; I hate you; I hate you; I hate you._

She doesn’t realize she’s crying, her fingers pulling roughly at Carol’s short hair, until she feels herself being petted gently. Carol’s comforting her, still breathing heavily but slowly coming back to herself

Carol’s fucking _comforting_ her, _goddamn it_ , and it’s even worse than everything that just happened.

She sobs into her mouth and bites down hard on Carol’s bottom lip, sucking off the blood, tasting salt and iron.

 _I hate you_ , she repeats in all the languages she knows and, when she runs out of languages, she flees.

***

The next day she stops going to Carol’s lab and starts fucking other people.

She only tries with Spock once. It’s been a long time since she’s been with anyone other than Carol and it’s distressingly difficult to get off with someone else. He seems to notice the problem, arching an eyebrow as she scoffs in frustration more than she moans. Near the end, Nyota catches him trying to perform a mind meld. She breaks his hand and leaves without finishing.

Sex with Vulcans is dangerous anyway; no one is sure just how much they can glean from touch. Nyota was top of the class when it came to mental defenses, but it’s hard to keep walls up when you’re seeing stars. The danger used to turn her on, but now she has something real to hide, twisting around her every thought for Spock to see, and the fear doesn’t excite her anymore.

She fucks Gary Mitchell two separate times in his bunk, Hikaru Sulu on a mat when a routine fight turns sexual, and Marlena Moreau on a couch in Rec Room 5. Christine Chapel is quickly designated her new favorite.

Chapel’s hair is blonde, and her eyes are blue, and if Nyota touches her from behind she can pretend she’s someone else. But she tastes wrong, smells wrong, sounds wrong. Calling her gentle would be a mistake, but Nyota never bleeds or limps afterward. She stops letting the nurse touch her back, the disappointment too hard to bear.

One day, she’s going down on her, Chapel reclining on a biobed and wrapping long black hair around and around her pale hands as Nyota entertains herself by listening to the vital signs climb on the monitor. Nyota fucks her until Mccoy threatens to put both of them in the agony booth: Christine for neglecting her duties, and Nyota for distracting his staff.

She wipes her mouth in an exaggerated gesture and lifts a middle finger in sync with her right eyebrow—an old Earth-gesture she’s grown quite fond of. He raises an eyebrow back but offers her a drink in his office instead of a one way trip to a torture chamber.

Nyota accepts, suspiciously, but it’s exactly what he promised—a glass of bourbon. The doctor proves on the tricorder that neither of the tumblers are poisoned before he passes her the one with less liquor. He gestures towards the chair facing his desk; they both sit, and Nyota waits for—well, she’s not really sure, but she figures it must be _something_.

Instead, Mccoy ignores her and starts on the mountain range of PADDs on his desk. There can be an awful lot of paperwork when the CMO and Head Nurse “displace” so many patients. They sit in silence, Nyota beginning to fidget uncomfortably as she sips hesitantly on the bourbon. It’s strong and sits thickly on her tongue before she swallows.

She’s not used to being caught off guard, always in charge of the situation, and Nyota’s less than pleased that Mccoy has joined the short list of people able to cause her true unease. She finishes her glass quickly and leaves, swallowing down the desire to speak, shout, or shove an object into any of the CMO’s softer bits. He’s under the Captain’s protection, and she reminds herself that, satisfying though it might be, hurting the man isn’t worth her life or her career.

The next day, he whacks an unfilled hypospray that was being used in inventive ways out of her hands and offers another invitation to his office after she’s done misusing his medical equipment. The day after is the same, him casually throwing it out there while Chapel’s bent over an unconscious ensign.

It starts to become a habit; fucking Christine Chapel in the medbay, then having a drink with Leonard Mccoy in his office. He stops asking and just assumes she’ll come. Nyota figures everyone must think they’re sleeping together, but he never propositions her.

He sits and signs off on forms affirming the “accidental” deaths of patients and requesting increasingly unique poisons for his experiments. She sits and stares at the shelving, nursing her drink, the discomfort easing more each day. It takes her longer to finish the bourbon every time.

Nyota prefers spiced rum, but she never says anything. Speaking would break the tentative air that exists between them during these evenings, and anyway, spiced rum just reminds her of Carol. She’d pretended not to notice how her supply stopped running out shortly after she’d begun spending those long hours in the lab. Now, she pretends not to notice how empty her liquor cabinet has been the last three weeks.

The bourbon is better.

It’s surprising, how much she begins to enjoy her time there. She still wonders what Mccoy’s long game is, but it doesn’t worry her anymore. Maybe he just wants a bit of quiet, pseudo-amiable company. It appears she does, too. Just another way Carol has ruined her.

In any case, it leaves her more peaceful than she was before—better than her time with Chapel, better than the fighting she gets into when she leaves, better than the work she does on shift, fulfilling as it is (or used to be). Better than anything else she does—and she does a lot—to keep her mind off Carol.

A month passes that way before Mccoy speaks. She hasn’t seen Carol in twice as long; she takes her meals in her room, finds alternate paths around the ship. Nyota’s memorized the other woman’s schedule and takes care never to be in a rec room when she’s off. The bruises and cuts on her body have faded, and she tries desperately not to miss them or the girl who’d put them there.  

The portions poured are significantly larger than usual that afternoon, but Nyota offers no more than a raised eyebrow—the only communication so far allowed—as she reaches for it.

“I know how love sits in a person, Lieutenant,” he says, and she nearly chokes on her bourbon. Blood rushes to her cheeks in embarrassment, both at his words and at being caught off guard.

 She doesn’t deny the implications of his statement. A response eludes her—her, Nyota Uhura, master of over 35 languages—and she’s not sure if she’d rather laugh or cry.  

“Have you tried just killing her?”

At this, she does respond, her laugh full of anger and pain. She’s scared by how much it gives away, and her voice cracks when she whispers, “Couldn’t.”

“Got it that bad then, huh?” He returns her laugh softly, his southern accent present even in that. Nyota tries and fails to remember a time when she’d heard him laugh at anything other than someone else’s pain. She figures this probably falls under the same category. “Well, then I reckon you’d better just give in. Could be worse.”

“It could?”

“No, not really,” and he laughs again, throaty, “but there’s not really any other option for us, now, is there?”

She recognizes what he’s giving her. He’s got her number, something that gets under her skin and starts picking at her from the inside, but he gave her his too. It’s his protection for what he’s saying, knows she’d kill him otherwise—no matter how much she liked him, no matter how likely she’d die for it afterward. It works.

“He know?” she asks him, deciding not to ignore the confession.

“Goddamn it, I hope not.” He chuckles darkly and swirls his glass. “Look, this is how you are now; might as well face up to it. Never figured you for a coward, but this avoiding act you’ve been putting on is mighty cowardly.”

He takes a sip of his bourbon and adds, “Either way, leave my head nurse alone, you hear? She’s got enough to be doing without you pawing at her all the time.”

She smirks at the joke, and Mccoy catches her eye, his voice dropping tone into cold and serious. “Don’t go telling people I’ve got soft spots, Nyota. I may be kind to you now, but you’ve seen me in my operating room.”

She swallows the rest of the liquor in one long gulp, fights the urge to gag, her eyes watering slightly as it burns her throat. It gives her courage. “Why me?”

He watches her, his rejuvenated good mood reflected in the flickering of his eyes, but the amusement fades into something resembling grief at her words.

“You remind me of a girl I knew in…another life.” Nyota has heard the rumors of a dead daughter and lifts her eyes to his. He seems to sense her question but ignores it, turning back to his PADDs. She can tell it’s time to leave and doesn’t say anything as she walks out.

She feels less piecemeal than before, though, and finds herself surprised—guesses she was wrong all these years, owes her mother an apology she’ll never offer. Who’d have known? She had wanted a father after all.

***

The next day she passes up sickbay and heads over to Carol’s lab instead for the first time in two months. She’s surprised to find the code hasn’t been changed, convinces herself it’s practically an invitation.

Carol stiffens when she slips inside, reaches for the nearest weapon defensively. When she spins around and sees that it’s Nyota, she freezes. Her hair has grown a couple of inches, and she’s significantly less battered than she was when she was sleeping with Nyota regularly, but otherwise she looks the same.

Nyota missed her so much she feels like she might pass out.

Carol looks more likely to kill her.

Instead she waits, letting Nyota make the next move, to see if she leaves her or kisses her or kills her. Nyota’s not entirely sure which option is the most appealing.

In the end, she grabs the back of Carol’s head and presses their faces together violently. Carol doesn’t kiss back, but instead takes the weapon she’d grabbed—another modified phaser—and whips Nyota across the head with it. Their point of connection is lost with the force of the blow, and she falls backward into the wall.

She swallows the urge to fight back as Carol punches her in the face once, twice, three times. She throws Nyota across the room into one of her work benches, scattering supplies and half-finished prototypes. For once, she seems not to care, focused only on hurting every inch of Nyota she can reach.

Carol’s mouth is tight and her eyes are burning, and Nyota can’t help but feel she deserves every little bit of hatred and pain directed at her. She thinks she feels her ribs crack underneath Carol’s fists. She thinks she feels her heart do the same.

After allowing knuckles to collide with her cheekbone one last time, Nyota grabs Carol’s wrists and wrestles with her until she has the blonde pinned down and struggling weakly against her.

Nyota coughs a wad of blood onto the floor and leans forward tentatively to press a light peck to Carol’s lips, the gentlest she’s ever been with her. She leans back to watch Carol’s expression. The girl’s eyes flicker through so many emotions it’s impossible to distinguish any of them, settling eventually back into anger. She’s livid all over again and spits in Nyota’s face, wrenching out of Nyota’s grip.

Nyota’s eyes tighten in preparation for the second onslaught but she’s met instead with Carol’s lips against her own. Time slows as she tastes her, rememorizing that unique and toxic flavor, and then it speeds up at twice the pace to make up for the lag, and they’re knocking everything over, ripping off each other’s uniforms, tugging hair—a sizeable clump of Nyota’s actually floats to the ground—denting tables. It starts off rough and angry and hurt, but by the third round, it’s changed.

Carol kisses Nyota’s hipbones like she missed her, and Nyota tries to say how sorry she is with each caress of her hands. After another shuddering orgasm, they end up on one of the larger workbenches—their limbs twisted together, Nyota’s head resting on Carol’s chest, and her fingers drawing stars along the blonde’s side. For the first time, she allows her eyes to drift closed. She falls into darkness thinking about how achingly right it feels.

When she wakes up, it’s to a sharp pain on her left wrist. Carol has Nyota’s arm cradled in her lap, etching a small musical note into the skin with one of the tools she keeps in the room. Nyota’s not sure what its original purpose was, but it’s effectively serving as a tattoo gun at the moment.

When Nyota raises an eyebrow in question, she replies in French: _You said I was a song you couldn’t scrub off your skin_.

Nyota’s stomach drops through all the decks below her and straight out of the ISS Enterprise. When she finds her voice, it sounds choked. “How…How much?” How much of what she said had Carol understood?

Carol smiles sympathetically and continues scratching dark lines into her wrist. _Only the French. My mother used to speak it._

Nyota’s heart starts beating again, but only tentatively. She tries and fails to remember what she’d admitted in the language.

 _It’s okay, though_ , Carol sighs _, it doesn’t have to count if it’s not in Empire Standard_. _You can say whatever you want._

Her eyes darken as she switches to Swahili and presses the needle down painfully. _If you try to leave me again, Nyota, I’ll kill you_.

Carol finishes the mark and hands the instrument to Nyota, holding out her left arm. Nyota gets the hint and starts the first pricks of what will be a solid black star on the blonde’s wrist.

_I won’t._

***

Mccoy takes one look at their new brands while fixing them up and doesn’t stop smirking at her for a full two weeks. It’s still worth it.


End file.
